to be open at that point and he had lost interest a little bit at columbia and wenttonatotodefend that nato's forces and so forth but he did an outstanding job at columbia and he would have gone on to do an outstanding job except he had a higher calling. >> david as i recall rather early in your book you say that you saw ike's reputation editing someone. do you still feel that way? >> well live look, in fact the connection with grants to me is very interesting. i think we look back nostalgically on world war ii in this great unqualified success and so i think the one thing we have not recognized both i believe in voters and the electorate in the 1950's did recognize is that we were really undergoing a post-war reconstruction period and the 1940s and 1950's so the parallel between eisenhower and grant, lincoln and roosevelt is a very compelling one and i think another reason that people have not focused on this parallel is because of ulysses s. grant's reputation and i remember that subject by all people -- was a friend of ours and came to visit us when julie's dad was in the white

, and, you know, this really -- and, again, strategic principles being the same, this iswhatnatofearedwhen the soviets were able to strike the u.s. homeland. you know, if the chinese get to the point of having a credible conventional strike capability, and that's what the north koreans go for too, but, you know, we'll see, then i think there's a real danger that it becomes this age old question of will the united states risk its own soil to come to the defense of an ally or even in the case of taiwan, a non-ally, obligated under certain conditions on the tra, and i think that given -- if i was chinese, i would want the capability to decouple. i think mark made a strong case of the kinds of capabilities that they are looking to in terms of hitting the homeland. guam is no longer a sanctuary. we'll see if the rest of the u.s. homeland is over the next ten years. >> great. we have a question from the audience members in the overflow auditorium. dan, you get a break. this is for you, ashley from rose chen. she says u.s. past dealings with asia have not been successful like the loss

you dothenatoannouncementof french? [laughter] >> i'll be happy to talk french at any time. [laughter] franchise repeat the first part of your question. >> the first part was you say logistics support and i wonder if you can describe that a little bit more commas that includes transportation or while? >> without getting into the details of the security support mission, we did provide transportation to the team. i'm just not going to get beyond that in terms of precisely what the transportation wise. >> up from triple-a? >> i'm not going to get into the specifics. >> kennison was a little after his? >> i'm not getting on the specifics. >> ever want to see what happened. they are gone. why couldn't you share that information? >> look, i'm really against the federal bureau of investigation, but it is reasonable to assume that we provided transportation support in benghazi in the transportation happens typically one of two ways. on the ground or from the air. so let me -- i'm not going to get into specifics, but i will go so far as to say we provided some air lift support. >> w

.natowentoutside its boundaries and started broadening its mandate by going into afghanistan. even today in the paper's story say they are leaving sooner. they are not happy with it and so forth. in terms of our ability to project the force, it seems like there are some strong head winds of the very least. john, how do you think that is likely to manifest itself over the course of the next year? we are talking about the american president. how you think he combats this or is he going to be capable combating this perception of the declining american influence? >> i think one thing that has to happen is that the next president needs to be articulate a rationale for the united states to provide leadership even under the conditions where there are economic and other head winds in front of the united states. the united states still is a critical player and will have to be a vision of internationalism that is on the sly and on the cheek that is to say new ways the united states can make a difference without necessarily putting marshall plans to work in every region of the world. and then

and beyond. didn't have the experience that europe hadwithnatowhich,remember, took decades itself. to heal these things. so that's another task before us and another reason to have the kind of cooperative security structure in the region that i'm talking about and that the united states seeks so that over time these things can be put behind, and people can march on to the future that their people really deserve. >> okay. well, tremendous thanks and a tremendous job. we really are pleased to have you here. thank you so much on behalf of everyone, and can we really appreciate you coming. >> appreciate it. [applause] >> road to the white house coverage continues in just a moment with president obama, he is in denver at a campaign rally. he's about to speak to supporters at sloan's lake park before he heads to madison, wisconsin, for events later today. we will have the president's remarks live starting in just a moment on c-span. mitt romney also out on the road today with his running mate, paul ryan. they have a late afternoon in fisherville, virginia, today live at 6:45 eastern her